Representative Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri revealed on MSNBC Tuesday that lawyers from the ACLU, IRS administrators, and even Attorney General Eric Holder will soon be speaking with hundreds of pastors in the African-American community on how they can best comport themselves throughout the 2012 election.

“We will have representatives from nine denominations who actually pastor somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10 million people,” he said, “and we’re going to first of all equip them with the information they need to know about what they can say and what they cannot say in the church that would violate their 501c3 status with the IRS.” [Emphasis added]

While they won’t specifically tell people whom to vote for, the respected speakers will discuss “draconian” (hint) voter identification laws, and the Congressional Black Caucus expects the move will only help the Obama’s campaign.

No they won’t tell people who to vote for. That will be understood. (wink-wink).

This is the same Attorney General who dropped charges of voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers because it “demeans [his] people” despite the the fact that a crime had been committed.

He suggests that “similarly-situated conservative-leaning pastors should band together and demand a similar briefing from high government officials.”

But of course the purpose of the briefings is not to advise pastors of what they’re allowed to say in church….what does the Obama administration care about how a liberal Pastor comports himself in church? We’ve got a President who sat in Reverend “G** damn the US of KKK-A” Wright’s church for twenty years, for crying out loud. During the 2008 primaries, he joked in church about Obama’s Democrat opponent’s hubby “riding dirty!” with Monica Lewinsky.

As if they are in any way sensitive to a church’s political etiquette.

The idea is to inflame their congregants. Cleaver gave away the real motive when he brought up “draconian voter ID laws” which Democrat race hustlers call racist because they supposedly disenfranchise blacks who can’t be bothered with getting IDs.

This has been a major theme of Holder’s for some time.

Last year, John Hinderaker of Powerline kept a watchful eye on the Obama administration’s efforts in consort with far-left organizations (including CPUSA) to demonize and frustrate the states’ efforts to protect ballot integrity by preventing voter fraud. See his posts here andhere for background.

In a major speech in Austin, TX, last December, Holder laid down the markers. DOJ whistleblower J Christian Adams wrote at the time:

He supported restrictions on political speech which will criminalize campaign falsehoods. He vowed hyper-scrutiny of voter integrity laws such as voter ID and vowed to run states like Texas through a nasty gauntlet on redistricting. If this doesn’t send a signal to Texas and South Carolina to pull their Voter ID laws out of Justice and go to court, nothing else will. Also in attendance was Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, a staring character in my book Injustice.

As you may remember, he and Valerie Jarrett grossly politicized MLK Day back in January. A CBS Atlanta reporter said the church service Jarrett spoke at sounded like a political rally. I said at the time, “we haven’t seen political propaganda this obnoxious, spoken from the pulpit, since Jeremiah Wright. It’s feeling like 2008 all over again.”

Eric Holder, speaking at MLK Day event in Columbia, SC, used the day as a pretense to blast “draconian” voter ID laws.

(Politico) — Attorney General Eric Holder used Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy on the anniversary of the civil rights leader’s birthday Monday to emphasize the Obama administration’s dedication to protecting the American people from discriminatory voting practices.

“Despite our nation’s record of progress, and long tradition of extending voting rights – today, a growing number of citizens are worried about the same disparities, divisions, and problems that Dr. King fought throughout his life to address and overcome,” Holder said at an MLK Day event in Columbia, S.C.

Holder’s remarks in the Palmetto State come just weeks after the Justice Department blocked the state’s new voter ID law from taking effect, citing an unfair burden on minority voters.

Make no mistake – this has nothing to do with protecting a church’s 501c3 status. No liberal black church is in danger of losing that under an Obama administration.

That’s just a fig leaf to cover the Obama administration’s divide and conquer campaign strategy. They need every single black vote they can get on election day, and they plan to do that by rallying the troops where they meet on Sundays. They’ll do that by demonizing Republicans who stand for voter integrity.

Here’s the only advice Holder needs to give the black community. If you want to vote, get a valid state ID. It’s really not that complicated.

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Inflame? Yeah probably but Obama is going to get 90+ of the black vote anyway, so so what? Are churchgoers going to take to the streets? Doubtful. Plus the blowback on sites like yours when we have some of this inflammatory rhetoric on video will be more detrimental news for this campaign.

Here’s the only advice Holder needs to give the black community. If you want to vote, get a valid state ID. It’s really not that complicated.

In Texas, there are no agencies to issue the voter i.d.-required cards in 81 of our 254 counties. If you want to vote, you have to drive 176 miles round trip to get the card, in some cases.

In Wisconsin, the state has rejected birth certificates from senior citizens because the state disagrees with the way the woman spelled her last name. The state told her to go to court, change her name, or change the birth certificate, and vote again in 2016. In Pennsylvania, the state has rejected birth certificates from New York.

Where’s your proof of birth to get a voter ID? How can we tell it’s not fake?

Maybe the meeting with the pastors of black churches is to prop up sagging support for the President? As far as voter id cards, @ Ed Darrell, I ask: how do all those poor people in those counties who have to drive 176 miles – round trip – to get an id card, have id that satisfies the requirements of valid photo id to get welfare or do any of the other things that require ‘valid photo id’ – a driver’s license, that is? Like? Like: buying a car, registering a car’s title, buying car insurance; you know, stuff that poor and minority folks never ever do. To oppose voter id – a simple driver’s license satisfies the Texas law, Mr. Darrell – is to encourag voting fraud. Plain and simple.

If you don’t drive, you don’t need a driver’s license. If the bank knows you, you don’t need another i.d. If you don’t want to carry a concealed handgun, you don’t need a concealed handgun permit. If you’re over the age of 65 and don’t drive any more, you can’t get a drivers license.

For most of the other transactions you ask about, a signature will work, if confirmed.

Texas is a big state. Perhaps a million people don’t drive, and don’t have another i.d. that the Republicans consider adequate to vote. Why the added requirements, especially for someone who has been voting for 60 years? Why won’t an i.d. that works to cash a check or use a credit care work? Why the added barrier, just to prevent old and minority people from voting?

In Texas, a photo-identification card is required to register to vote — why won’t those cards work for voting, too?

By the way, Ike, I’ve been trying to find a case where a voter identification card would have prevented voter fraud, and I can’t find one. In Maryland, the Republican Secretary of State was charged with fraud because he used robo-calls to call tens of thousands of African-American Democrats to tell them the wrong voting date. Voter ID can’t fix that, you know?

There is signficant voter fraud in the U.S. — but voter i.d. laws don’t touch it.

Why not fight fraud, instead of building new bureacracies that deprive people of their right to vote?

Stalin used those methods, too, and so did the fascist regimes throughout Europe prior to World War II. I would think any red-blooded American would think 200 times before using Stalin’s methods to stop people from getting “valid” identification cards.

What new bureaucracy is the Texas voter ID law creating? The state’s already-existing agencies continue to issue the ID’s they have been issuing for the same reasons they have been issuing them – e.g., DPS and driver’s licenses – and the election officials continue to check ID’s as they already already check voter registration cards. No new employees required. Why is some wide-spread method of voter fraud required to justify this law? That the Republican Secretary of State of Maryland was caught trying to prevent African-Americans from voting isn’t an argument against this law. Your ability to cite this incident tells us that existing laws already prevent or at least remedy such outrages. Implying that the GOP is equivalent to Stalin by voting for laws requiring ID’s in order to vote? You ought to at least write a complete parallelism. “…using Stalin’s methods to stop people from getting ‘valid’ identification cards” does not equal requiring people to get valid identification cards. None of your three points are a rebuttal to my comment claiming that – at least in Texas – ID’s are easy to get.

You are aware – are you not? – that anyone can go to any DPS license office and get either a driver’s license or a DPS-issued identification card which would be an acceptable form of ID for voting purposes? It’s true that a driver’s license costs money; about the same amount of money as the cost of a twelve-pack of beer in most retail stores.

My apologies, Mr. Darrell, I missed seeing your first reponse which does contain other points which are directed at voter ID’s. The short answer to your arguments ending with why won’t the same ID work that you used to register to vote with is, simply, that it will; I refer you to my last paragraph above referring to DPS-issued ID cards. And in nearly all of the situations that I mention and others I haven’t in which a valid ID is required, a signature will work; quite true. Unfortunately, only if the official whose job requires positive identification of a person knows you personally; doesn’t happen often except in the smallest counties or for folks who visit the courthouse a lot. Contra-factually, the roughly four million folks who live in Houston probably would need ID’s for all of those transactions.

Very simply: it is a matter of public policy, already decided by the legislative body with the authority to require ID’s in order to vote. That you do not like it is apparent – I confess that the Texas legislature passes a lot of laws that I think are wrong or imprudent, as do you – but arguing irrelevancies and ad hominems doesn’t change their decision. (Ascribing evil motives to the folks who support the law and to those who passed it doesn’t count either.) That I do like it likewise doesn’t matter. It is, like the ObamaCare legislation which is the law of the nation, the voter ID law is the law of Texas, until and unless it is overturned by a court having jurisdiction or repealed by the Texas Legislature.

Voter ID laws deprive millions of people of their right to vote — senior citizens who no longer drive, anyone who has any issue with their birth certificate, in many cases voters who have been continuously registered and voting for more than 50 years. What is the use to the state to deprive millions of people of their right to vote?

In general, yes, most people will have a drivers license. In specific, no, that’s not accurate — not in big cities with good mass transit, not for senior citizens who no longer drive.

What public good is served by these voter identification laws? None. They cost millions of dollars. They catch no criminals. They prevent no known voter fraud.

But they take away the right to vote from millions of people.

Why should those innocent people have to pay with their right to vote? What harm did they ever do to you?

Oh, that’s right: They do tend to vote Democrat. I see.

ALEC Crow laws, the Son of Jim Crow.

It’s shameful. I’d be embarrassed to support such a law, and I wish you were, too.

I’ve argued no irrelevancy, and I’ve made no ad-hominems. I merely point out that there is not a case of voter fraud these laws prevent. There are lots of cases of voting these laws prevent.

Texas’s law has been stayed by the federal courts under the Voting Rights Act. All of them should have been stayed.

Oh, knock it off. You can barely function in society today without a valid ID. You need one to write a check, buy liqueur, get on a plane etc etc etc. Democrats have no problem with ID requirements anywhere/ anytime except on election day. And we all know why this is.

No, actually, Mr. Darrell, I have Tricare, which I earned via 24 years of military service, which – I hope! – ObamaCare will have no effect upon. If you do not see how comparing me, even if indirectly, with Stalin and asserting that the Voter ID law in Texas is the equivalent of one of the Jim Crow laws of years gone by (which, I would remind you, were passed by the Democrats in power at the time), and claiming that you’re embarrassed by this law and I should be as well are not attacks upon me, rather than arguments against my position, then I have no further comments to make. All of the arguments – those few that were genuinely arguments – against the law which you have presented were debated in the Texas Legislature. You lost. At the risk of sounding angry or bitter, I remind you of what President Obama said to the House Minority Leader who was then a Republican, when the Minority Leader asked the President what happened to bipartisanship and the President replied: We won the election. Live with it.” I repeat that blunt statement of political fact to you and tell you once again that your arguments lost in the voting in the Texas Legislature on this law.

Ed, you’re full of crap. There are six months left to the election. If it’s not important enough for someone to find a way to obtain an appropriate ID in those six months, then that person doesn’t deserve to vote. Holder calls voting “sacred.” Then it ought to be protected as sacred.

Knock it off? You support stealing votes from people, and you expect any patriot to just shut up and let you?

Tell me how Viviette Applewhite in Pennsylvania can get a satisfactory voter identification — or better yet, you pay for the lawyers to get it done, since you think it’s no big deal. She marched for your rights — now will you stand up for her?

How about Ruthelle Frank, in Wisconsin? Will you stand up for her? She’s been voting since 1948, raised kids who are great citizens, conservative, held elective office — but Wisconsin now claims not to like her Wisconsin birth certificate, and she must either sue for a certificate, change her name, or change the birth certificate — all solutions of which will cost hundreds of dollars. And she’s not alone.

Can you name ONE instance of voter fraud that voter ID would stop? I’ll see that claim, and give you 80,000 people in Wisconsin being deprived of their right to vote, another 100,000 in Pennsylvania, and hundreds of thousands in Texas.

Don’t try to steal their votes and pretend to be patriotic. That’s shameful.

Darrell — we’ve had this debate here before, and I hate to tell you – your side lost. Your points are tedious – you’re tedious. If someone wants to go through all your propaganda points one by one, they are welcome to. But I’m not wasting my time with something that is so obviously stupid and wrong. I’ve linked to case after case after case of proven voter fraud. It’s absolutely absurd of you to try to make the case that a photo ID wouldn’t stop fraud. James O’Keefe has demonstrated again and again how a simple ID would prevent fraud.

Your side can only stammer – yeah but prove it happens, when everybody knows ACORN and other groups like it facilitate fraud on a massive scale in election after election.
It’s the only reason Al Franken is a Senator today.